Past Life Hero, ch 38

As he walked across the school grounds, Max noticed more stolen glances or even open staring, even among upperclassmen. Lavinia must have noticed as well because he heard her voice in his ear saying, "Wow! You're really becoming famous, huh? You know, I was famous in my time too, or maybe infamous. Then again, you might be infamous as well." The ghost girl chuckled.

Max said, "Quiet, you. This is only the first step of the plan."

"Well, it would be nice if you'd clue me in on the rest of it," said Lavinia. "You didn't tell me what you were doing back at the Mystic Spear Academy until we were right in the middle of it."

"Hmmm. That's fair," Max conceded. "Let's go somewhere where we can talk and I can think." Max briefly thought about heading to the cafeteria to get food, but decided not to. He didn't want to let the staff at the Summoner Academy know he had money yet. If they knew, others would likely find out, too.  He had no doubt that a number of people in this Quadrant had it out for him now. He wasn't sure how things might change if they knew he had money, but he imagined it wouldn't be good. Right now, they all might think that he didn’t have options, that they could control him.

He was proven correct about at least some of it a moment later when Lavinia said, "Hey, I know you can't see it, but there's an enforcement spirit following us."

"A what?" said Max.

"An enforcement spirit. Among the troublemakers in an academy, if a student is considered a threat to fellow students and they have enough demerits against them, the disciplinary staff can dispatch an enforcement spirit. It basically follows you around, and if you try to initiate violence or mischief against any fellow students in your academy, it will immediately intervene."

"What does ‘intervene’ mean?" asked Max.

"It means it'll restrain and hurt you until other people get there to take care of it."

"Ah, I see," said Max. "Well, I haven't attacked any students in this academy, and I don't plan to, so it shouldn't be a problem."

Lavinia said, "Oh, but there's another use of the enforcement spirit, too."

"And what's that?" asked Max with a sigh.

"Surveillance!" said the ghost girl in a chipper voice. "I used to have one following me around too. It would report everything I was doing or talking about or trying to work on in secret and was quite annoying. What’s worse is there are a few offices or even individuals that can field them.  Good luck figuring out who set this one on you, at least for a while.”

"Great," said Max. "But I have a question.  I get that this enforcement spirit is probably tied to the academy, right?  Not directly to a person?  Like, someone can command it I’m guessing but it’s not actually their contracted spirit.”

“Correct.”

“You said it will restrain someone.  I’m figuring this means it’s strong, like the sort of spirit that would be pretty OP in a fight.  So,  if spirits can be this powerful, why are Summoners so weak?”

Her voice was mock-cheery.  “Those are the kinds of questions that got me turned into a pariah during my lifetime, Maxi-lad.”

“Don’t call me that.  It sounds dumb.”

“Okay, Maxi-lad.”

Max paused and with great seriousness, asked, “What was that, Bathroom-Peeper Lavi-Lavi?”

The ghost grumbled.  “You made your point.  Dropped.”

“I’m glad we understand each other.  Now let's go."

Max didn't bother going to his old dorm room. He’d never gotten a set of athletic clothes from Gantry Pliss so he didn't have anything worth keeping or moving from there. Instead, he headed towards the tree line at the edge of the Summoner Academy grounds and went out into the forest. He wasn't trying to hide what he was doing, and a few students noticed him. One, a young-looking woman, turned and hurried in the opposite direction, perhaps to report his movements to someone.

Lavinia must have had the same thought because she said, "Wow, you've only been here for a few weeks now, and you already have people ratting on you. That's kind of impressive."

Max grumbled, "I barely even know anyone."

"Yeah, because you've been too busy murdering people in bathrooms," snickered Lavinia.

Max sighed, stopped, and sat on a log. He adjusted how he was sitting quickly when he discovered that he still had the Mystic Spear path book in his back pocket.

“Huh,” he muttered as he checked his pockets.  He was pleased to find that he also had the spyglass and the hearing device that he'd picked up in the Mystic Spear Path Academy dorm.

At first he was surprised, but as he thought about it, it made sense.  After all, he already knew that students could steal things from each other's dorms and keep them. The rules were different if one had things on their body for safekeeping.  And the exception to keeping items safe, of course, was to pay to secure one’s room. Max didn't know how much money that cost yet. It was going to be one of the first things he found out within the next day or two.

He said, "Okay, Lavinia, you told me a little bit of what happened when I was out. I think the mental stuff you sent filled in most of the blanks.  But can you elaborate any? After that, I'll tell you my plans."

Lavinia appeared to Max's vision and nodded.  She sat down in front of him on another log. "It's been pretty wild. Having a contract with you has giving me a lot more power.”  She muttered, “Probably should have done this before.”  Then she raised a finger.  “You’re awfully lucky, you know.  Most Summoners don’t have spirits that are even very intelligent, much less one that can do reconnaissance on her own like this.

“Anyway, I've actually been roaming the entire Quartet and in all four academies.  There have been official inquiries about students trespassing on academy grounds without getting clearance. There are Quartet rules against uninvited trespassing that have been basically ignored until recently.

“But after the inquiries started, it turned out that there have been some very bad apples going to other academies and causing problems. It wasn’t just Summoner Academy, and the Mystic Spear students are not the only aggressors.  Once that came out, all the fingers pointing at the Summoner Academy because of what you did started pointing right back.

“So even though the Dean you just met is legitimately angry at you probably because she's crooked as hell, this turn of events has actually ended up working in the Summoner Academy's benefit.”

“How?”

“Well,  the Summoner Academy is the weakest and could play the victim throughout this entire thing. In fact, the Headmaster even managed to turn it around and described you like…the Summoner Academy's first great chance to ever win anything in the Quartet competition. That resonates with every one of the authorities in this Quartet. It painted you differently so instead of seeing you as a useless first year rocking the boat, you were a promising up-and-comer.  They could imagine one of their own students as you.  So basically the more savvy leaders of the Summoner Academy like the Headmaster have been talking about you like you were being intentionally suppressed from the get-go by a rival school and that you just snapped from bullying."

"Bullying," said Max. "Not super wrong, I guess.  So how do you know all of this?"

Lavinia rolled her eyes and said, "I can go through walls and listen just fine. Well, I can't go into warded places, but you'd be surprised how many of the higher ups don't ward their rooms where they have important discussions, even though they're Summoners."

"Fair enough.  Of course, most spirits probably aren’t past Summoners with human level intellect, albeit with a terrible sense of humor," said Max.  Lavinia stuck her tongue out at him.  Max Mused, “But based on what you just said, why haven't I met with any of these…more sympathetic professors yet?  Or the Headmaster? After I woke up, I had a mostly unwelcoming respawn committee and had to go meet that lovely Dean.  What was her name?  Professor Dalton.”

"Answer is simple.  Politics," said Lavinia.

"Politics?"

"Yes, politics. The fact is you're only a first year.  There are still a lot of professors in the Summoner Academy who don't believe that you're hot shit despite the fact that Professor Grave Call has been all but singing your praises."

"Huh," grunted Max. He crossed his arms. "So based on what I'm hearing here, I might actually get some support from the powers that be.  At least, more than I might have been led to believe so far."

"Correct," said Lavinia. "Everything is kind of tied into your participation in the future Quartet competition. You’re not a lifer and you’re not connected, but your potential gives you value.  The fact you kicked the shit out of a number of Mystic Spear Students definitely backs up what your supporters are saying.  And as you probably know, the Quartet competition qualifiers are at the end of this semester."

"Yeah, I got that," said Max. "So what it kind of comes down to is at least in Summoner Academy, I need to play nice with the professors to some degree and more importantly, I need to stay alive because–"

Lavinia finished his thought, "If you're dead during the qualifier or during the competition you can't participate."

Max shook his head. "So there are more implications in all of this, too.  Since this competition is such a big deal, and some people are willing to play nasty, and the demerits system won’t stop students with enough money or power, the best competitors from each Academy probably get a price on their head, huh?"

"Yes," said Lavinia, "that's about the right of it, which is why so many competitors actually go into the dungeons before each competition, sometimes with guards heading there and back. Like, in the dungeon they might get killed by monsters, sure but if it's within their ability to stay alive it's probably the safest place they can possibly be before competing.  All the stuff you did to make the academies crack down on trespassers might change the meta, though.”

"They went to the dungeons before?  Well that's messed up," said Max. "I'm guessing that was especially true for Summoners too, right?"

Lavinia nodded. "Yes. For Mystic Spear Path Academy students, it's kind of crazy to imagine any of them having a serious hit on them actually being called in, except maybe by fellow students. But most of the strongest over there are well connected enough to have around-the-clock protection. Meanwhile at the Summoner Academy…" She shrugged.

Max sighed.  He thought out loud again.  "So I'm still kind of on my own. Even if I have backing from some of the professors at the Summoner Academy, that's mostly just political, it sounds like, since they can't directly get involved."

"For the most part, yes," said Lavinia with a nod. "Now, are you going to tell me your plan or what?"

"Alright, so here is what I have in mind," said Max.  He began walking back to the path out of the Summoner Academy grounds. His contracted spirit was chortling almost the entire time, so it wasn't hard for him to figure out that she was amused by his plan.

Leaving the academy now was going to be risky since he had money of his own, but necessary for the next step of his plan.  Besides, if he got murdered, his killer wouldn’t get to keep anything he was carrying.  And if he respawned again, he was going to abandon this plan and just retreat into the woods to train with Lavinia.

At the gate to the academy grounds, the two authorities on duty frowned at him rather nastily after scanning his palm with their wands. Max assumed that his name had come up and they recognized it, or maybe they recognized him on sight.  They didn't stop him, though.

Outside the academy grounds in the central area, he noticed a line of what looked like golems.  They were spaced every fifty yards or so outside of the wood line and the boundary to the Summoner Academy grounds. He glanced around and the line of golems seemed to extend for the entire circumference of the central area. He imagined that this was part of the authorities' new measures to stop students from trespassing at other universities.

"Sorry, not sorry," said Max out loud.

"What was that?" asked Lavinia.

"Nothing," said Max. Now that he was in the central area with all the delicious smells, Max couldn’t ignore his hunger. So he stopped in one of the restaurants near the mall. This one was pretty empty this time of day and sold a variety of food that reminded Max of Asian cuisine back on earth. He got a few of what looked like egg rolls and ate with relish, washing it all down with lemonade.

Max had known the meal would be expensive so he didn’t even glance at the price.  But instead of only taking the mana unit, the cashier also scanned his palm with a stone wand similar to the ones that Max had seen the professors use. He partially understood why after a system screen popped up in his vision listing his name and a money balance. It turned out the food he'd consumed was worth less than one full mana stone.  The screen listed this particular restaurant by name, and it took Max a second to figure out exactly what he was looking at.

As he left the restaurant, he mentally sent to Lavinia, I've never had to deal with change before. So I guess instead of change in the quadrant, you get store credit, huh?

That's right, said Lavinia. There is no denomination less than one unit.  Which just makes it even harder for poor students to ever actually leave the academy and do anything fun.

Max grinned. Or it means that they just have to keep going to the same places over and over again where they have an account.

Lavinia chuckled and said, That's true too.

Max sent one last wave of amusement to his unseen companion before smoothing his features into neutral and heading to his new destination, a large restaurant that was part bar, part jazz lounge, and part bistro that he heard from Amy, the weapon clerk.  This restaurant was apparently one that first and second year Mystic Spear Path students like to hang out at.

Today, Max was planning to cause more trouble.  He wasn’t sure if the enforcement spirit was still following him from the Summoner Academy, but if it was, it was likely going to report on him soon.  Based on what Lavinia said, it shouldn’t act outside of the academy.  Hopefully.

He was about to find out.  Maybe he should still ask Lavinia, though.   He was thinking about it as he walked into the restaurant.